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Category: Desserts

How to Use Quinces, an Old-Fashioned Fruit

How to Use Quinces, an Old-Fashioned Fruit

Quinces resemble a pear, and are yellow when ripe, but the exterior is bumpy. They have a sour, astringent taste unless completely ripened, so they’re usually cooked. This fruit bruises quickly and very rapidly turns to a dark brown.  The quince tree was brought to the American colonies by English settlers. During the 18th century, there was usually a quince at the lower corner of the vegetable garden [reference]. Today, there aren’t many commercial quince tree orchards in the U.S….

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Old-Fashioned Gooseberry Recipes

Old-Fashioned Gooseberry Recipes

When I was in grade school in the 1960s, we visited our grandparents every summer and they grew gooseberries. We picked and ate green gooseberries right off the bushes. They were certainly sour, but that was the attraction.  We had contests to see how many we could eat before having to spit them out. We never did get to see them as red berries. They must have ripened in late summer or early fall after we went back home.  I…

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How to Make Fondant and Bonbon Candy

How to Make Fondant and Bonbon Candy

There are basically two types of fondant that are used for making bonbons. The first is poured fondant, a creamy mixture used as a filling, and the other is rolled fondant or fondant icing, which is of a thicker texture and used for coating candy or icing cakes.  INFORMATION BELOW FROM 1800s COOKBOOKS CANDY MAKING AT HOME The proverbial “sweet-tooth” is a characteristic of the American people. Hundreds of tons of candy are annually consumed, and fortunes have been made in…

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A Variety of Prune (Dried Plum) Recipes

A Variety of Prune (Dried Plum) Recipes

FROM AN 1800s COOKBOOK: “The unpopularity of prunes is unfortunate. This may be because prunes were formerly one of the cheapest fruits or because they are cooked and served in the same way too often.

Desirable results can often be secured by combining prunes and other dried fruits with tart fruits such as apricots, apples, and rhubarb.”

Old-Fashioned Pudding Recipes

Old-Fashioned Pudding Recipes

There were no packaged pudding mixes in the 1800s. Homemade puddings were made from scratch and were either baked, boiled, or steamed. Puddings were made from a variety of foods, served hot or cold, and was a time-consuming process. “My*T*Fine” was the first packaged pudding introduced to the United States in 1918. Source – FoodTimeline.org .   INFORMATION BELOW FROM 1800s COOKBOOKS ABOUT PUDDINGS The eggs for all sorts of puddings in which they are used should be well beaten and then…

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Old-Fashioned Cake Baking Advice

Old-Fashioned Cake Baking Advice

Baking a cake wasn’t easy for housewives in the 1800s. Boxed cake mixes weren’t available until the early 1930s, so all cakes had to be made from scratch; mixing flour, butter, eggs, sugar, baking powder, and other ingredients by hand. Most ovens were fueled by wood. Oven thermometers weren’t invented yet, so they had to learn to determine how hot to heat their oven and how long to bake a cake. INFORMATION BELOW FROM 1800s COOKBOOKS Before commencing to make…

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Making Homemade Marshmallows

Making Homemade Marshmallows

There is actually a marshmallow plant that usually grows wild in swamps and marshlands. The marshmallow plant (Althaea officinalis) is not the same as the common mallow plant (Malva sylvestris).  Marshmallow has a thick, sticky consistency similar to the okra plant.  Made into a candy, doctors often offered it to children to soothe their sore throats. But eventually, marshmallow root sap was replaced by other binding agents such as gum arabic and gelatin. Without the sap, the candy no longer…

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Old-Fashioned Fruitcake Recipes

Old-Fashioned Fruitcake Recipes

Most commercially-made fruitcakes are alcohol-free, but traditionally, some fruitcake recipes  included alcohol; both for the flavor and as a preservative. That way, fruitcake could be made months ahead of time for the Christmas holidays. In the 1800s, wood burning stoves didn’t have temperature gauges, and oven temperatures varied based on the type and size wood used. You were supposed to learn how to determine the heat through experience.  Some recipes ignored the oven temperature and others used terms such as…

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